


Fire and Ice

by dastardlywhiplash



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 19:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dastardlywhiplash/pseuds/dastardlywhiplash
Summary: A little bit of Boy's King Arthur; a little bit of Culhwch and Olwen superpowers. A little bit of dragon-slaying; a little bit of bonding time.





	Fire and Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [makgeolli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/makgeolli/gifts).



> makgeolli, happy holidays, and thank you for giving me an opportunity to write these lads (plus a dragon)!
> 
> Culhwch ac Olwen passages referenced are pasted in notes at the end for curious folk (or those who don't want to wade through those name lists to find them again ;) )

They watched the wyrm crawling up from the ash-laden hillocks it had razed, all long, sinuous body balanced on awkward bow-legs, and Kay snorted.

“Still think I was too ‘cock-sure’?” he mocked, pitching his voice to sound something perhaps like Bedivere’s northern accent.

“I didn’t say that, your father did,” his companion retorted, feigning hurt and somehow unintentionally parrying with the most devastating blow he could have. 

Kay glowered at him from atop his own horse, vaguely aware of the wrym blinking one eye, then the other in their direction. It had been an awkward ride, thanks to The Wart who, full of all the self-importance of a newly-crowned king, had insisted on Kay’s venturing with a partner. Art had sent along Bedivere—an old playmate, recently returned with his father from raids along the old wall—and probably thought he was very clever and kingly generous for it. In fact, he was probably patting himself on the back at that very moment, while Kay wrestled with the fact that, in the interval since their last boyhood meeting, Bedivere had somehow grown up witty, understatedly handsome (in a pasty, northern sort of way), and somehow the one person cheerfully immune to Kay’s usual acidity. Kay was also no fool to the fact that Bedivere was undoubtedly the only man at Camelot actually willing to accompany him.

“I would like to add,” Bedivere put in, taking his own turn at Kay’s lilting southern dialect, “that I do not sound like  _ that _ .”

“Fine,” Kay growled, hustling the conversation along, “but we are agreed that we don’t fear an over-large snake, breath of fire and ice or no?”

He twirled his sword casually, finding a good grip and eying the wyrm with boredom. From the height of his horse, a single chop should have done it, accounting for the thing’s size and the probable toughness of its hide. The wyrm blinked slowly, slitting its eyes.

“Oh, absolutely. This hardly—”

The wrym charged, boney legs dancing out and becoming a blur, and they both let out undignified yelps and scattered before the tongue of fire that had suddenly come very close.

Kay’s horse tripped out of the way of the monster’s lashing tail while he violently yanked on the reigns and tried to curse it into submission. At least the wyrm had a large turn radius. 

Across the low dip of what had once been a meadow, Bedivere struggled to keep his horse calm, forced to steer with only his legs while clutching his spear with his single hand. He was watching the wyrm intently, but had the same look of miscalculation and regret that was probably mirrored on Kay’s face.

Kay internally kicked The Wart’s behind, the way he had when they were children.

_ He _ could afford to be cocky about fire and ice-breathing wyrms. They were practically tailored by God for him to defeat. The same could not be said for most people, Bedivere included.

The wyrm now had a choice between two targets, and Kay realized, a second later than he should have, that that target really needed to be him. 

The wyrm, for its part, decided that the man precariously holding onto his horse was a better bet.

Kay lashed his own horse into a charge, hoping it was smart enough to keep out of the line of fire if Kay guarded their flank with his shield.

His mad dash distracted the wyrm enough that it shot a puzzled blast of ice towards him. He gritted his teeth past the sting and barrelled his mount in front of Bedivere. 

By a stroke of luck, the ice went high and struck him upside the face. It hurt like murder and his horse reared in fright, but he could force heat up to warm his skin, and it hadn’t hit the animal at all. Just as he grunted, he heard a cry of pain behind him and stupidly turned. 

It hadn’t been enough.

Bedivere hunched over his horse, spear sitting limply in his lap as he tendered what was usually his good arm. He was also staring at Kay, who must have looked a sight, having taken a full tongue of ice to the face. Bedivere’s expression shifted from chilled pain to open-mouthed astonishment.

The ice had virtually shredded his gauntlet and brace, and what Kay could see of his arm through the jagged cracks was pale and limp underneath. Whatever the wyrm had done, it had struck him to the bone.

“I can—” he reached out, not at all certain what he was doing, because it had only been a second and that in itself was too long. A roar sounded behind him.

“Catch this!” Gritting his teeth against what must have been considerable agony, Bedivere tossed his spear with only his knee. Kay had just enough mind to grasp it from midair and swing his horse around as the wyrm treated them to another jet of fire.

He swung his shield up—not because he needed it, but because the man behind him did. The fire that scorched over it pushed back against his arm with a force that made him shudder, but the red hot heat against the metal didn’t burn him the way it should have. He snarled in irritation as everything sizzled around him.

“Because I’ve such skill with spears,” he grumbled under his breath to no one in particular, fumbling.

“You need a weapon with reach!”

He was vaguely aware of his horse staggering underneath him and swung off it blindly, peering at the coiling wyrm over the edge of his shield.

“Take my horse; I don’t want to see him roasted on a spit if I can help it,” he called over his shoulder, hoping the bay had done alright in the fall.

The wyrm watched him steadily from the hillock, paused for the moment, but its bowed legs looked ready to surge forward again. If it was intelligent, it was probably perplexed and annoyed with his refusal to die.

“I’ve had enough of this running around. I’m going to let it charge.”

He waited for Bedivere to tell him that was a foolish idea.

“It’s venomous,” the other man said quietly—not scolding him, just reminding.

“I’ll stab upwards under the jaw.”

“You’ll have to time that very well.” Again, a simple observation. Never daring to take his own eyes off the beast, Kay could hear Bedivere gritting his teeth against the pain.

“Do you think?” he asked sarcastically, as the wyrm finally had enough of them and dashed forward in another burst of speed. 

He swore again and charged forward himself, because there wasn’t much else to do. It worked, decently: the wyrm froze and swiveled its head, intrigued by this suicidally stupid bit of prey.

Kay was vaguely aware of it sprinting again, and by great fortune the wyrm shot a particularly vicious tongue of fire, followed instantly by ice, at him. He rolled into it, ignoring the sting and using the creature’s own weapon as cover. 

It shrieked in fury like a bird of prey, and a set of talons the length of his arm pounded into the ground next to him. The beast arched its neck, and Kay, leveraging the length of the spear, drove upwards.

The drawn-out squeal was unmistakable as the spear hit home, piercing it through the jaw and head like a pig on a spit. 

Kay’s crow of triumph dissolved into another series of curses as a single drop of acid splashed his forehead—not, unfortunately, one of his many invulnerabilities.

#

“Let me see your arm.” Kay thrust his own massive arm out. 

He looked ridiculous, big and florid as ever, with a dock leaf plastered to his face where the acid had hit. Bedivere, curled miserably against a rock in the little crevice of boulders they had dragged themselves to regroup between, wasn’t finding anything particularly funny. Behind them, their horses attempted to graze on the ash-laden grass, Kay’s bay stallion tendering one of its front hooves. It wasn’t the only one.

“What?”

“I can sort it.”

Bedivere cringed, still stoically quashing the panic that wanted to flutter in his chest. He couldn’t afford to lose the other hand. It wasn’t fair. But that wasn’t fair to Kay either; he was only trying to help.

“I’m not sure you—”

Kay lunged forward, but when he caught Bedivere’s hand in his he suddenly became as gentle as if it were the Queen’s. It was still enough to send a spike of pain up and down Bedivere’s sinews

“Sorry,” Kay grunted, about as grudging as any of his apologies, “but you have to move first.  _ Now _ sit still.”

Bedivere did still and bite back the pain, with little else to do.

Kay lay another hand over his, concentrating. Slowly, a gentle heat began to build, like warm water, enveloping and soothing the ache. Bedivere would have taken it for the false, prickling warmth that came with frostbite, except that when Kay shifted his hand slightly, he realized it was radiating from his palms. 

He stared up at Kay in further astonishment and found the other man grudgingly watching him out of the corner of his eye, waiting for some comment—which Bedivere couldn’t resist.

“That is quite an array of magical gifts you have,” he began carefully, words stilted as the pain started to subside. “Untouched by fire and cold, and you carry your own warmth?”

“Somethin’ like it,” Cai grumbled, unsatisfied, while tracing Bedivere’s knuckles with a calloused thumb. As another silence fell, Bedivere feared he might go mad for it.

“It must have come to you after Father and I returned to Pictland.” He felt that, had Kay possessed an immunity to fire as a child, he would surely have shown it off by jumping in and out of the hearth. Bedivere felt a smile tease his lips, despite the remaining sting. He liked his memories of Kay as a rough and tumble little boy who drove all the adults in the fort to distraction. He had been sorry to hear that the playmate he remembered, who had been such great fun, had let his stubbornness turn to boorishness and made himself so unpopular.

But didn’t a man with such remarkable gifts have the right to a little vanity?

“Yeh.” Kay grunted. Another silence.

“And this?” Bedivere asked gently. It was more difficult for Kay to dance around the warmth, because it had brought them to such intimate closeness. The large man squirmed uncomfortably.

“Yeh. That’s new too.”

“I wish I had such gifts,” Bedivere mused, still trying his damndest to draw him out of his shell. “I wonder if it might up and happen one day? Or I’ve missed my chance.”

“I asked Da’ if we had any elf or giant blood or the like, and he groused that I ought to go ask my mother,” said Kay flatly. 

Bedivere took the hint and and let it drop. He wished he could say something, though, because the sight of Kay bent over his arm, oddly tender as he cradled whatever magic it was he had and Bedivere’s hand in his own large mits prompted a complicated jumble of emotions.

“Go on and say what’s on your mind, ” Kay suddenly snapped, and it was all Bedivere could do to keep himself from jumping. He considered feigning ignorance, but that wasn’t fair either. Not to a friend.

“You’re thinking of your father’s prophecy,” he observed quietly. He refused to rise to an argument, but he couldn’t shake the suspicion that he was getting farther with Kay than anyone had in ten summers.

“I mean isn’t it funny that it’s the damn opposite of what he brilliantly foresaw,” Kay grumbled, but the anger in his eyes burned darker than usual. Bedivere felt a pang of sympathy that he didn’t dare show. 

“Perhaps he didn’t understand your blessings.”

“Perhaps he and his prophecies are a bit horseshite.”

“ _ Well _ ,” Bedivere shrugged, pointedly refusing to comment. Kay looked up in surprise, a kind of grudging respect building in his eyes. Apparently, Bedivere had passed, or semi-passed, some kind of test, and better, he had pleasantly surprised Kay. Little did the others back at Camelot, who thought they liked Bedivere a lot, understand: being chivalrous wasn’t the same as being nice.

Slowly, Kay began to smile, a lopsided, boyish smirk. Bedivere grinned back, a flash of strong, white teeth. And then, to his surprise, he flexed his arm, and it felt loose and whole, and every finger curled responsively. He sat up, staring at his hand in wonder.

“Kay, thank you!”

Kay muttered something unintelligible. Strange creature—he seemed to crave attention and admiration, but when he got it, he didn’t know what to do with it. Bedivere suddenly decided he liked it when Kay was flustered. He spared him for the moment, testing each finger joyfully and rubbing his palm with the stump of his wrist.

“What a marvelous trick! I owe you a great debt.”

“Try to keep it to yourself, will you,” came the ungracious response. “I can’t have everyone asking me to warm their stew.”

“Of course, of course,” Bedivere soothed, unable to resist now that his humor was returning. “Or bargaining their way into your bed, undoubtedly.”

“What?” Kay jerked up and nearly hit his head on an overhanging boulder, his bear’s grumble taking on an impressive hitch.

“The warmth,” Bedivere drawled innocently, secretly reveling. “You must make for a very nice bedfellow.” 

Somehow, he resisted the urge to reach over and pat the flush and surprise off Kay’s face with his newly-healed hand.

**Author's Note:**

> "And Cynyr Keinfarchog - Cai was said to be his son. He said to his wife 'If there is any part of me in your son, maiden, his heart will always be cold, and there will be no heat in his hands. He will have another peculiarity: if he is a son of mine, he will be tenacious. He will have another peculiarity: whenever he carries a burden, whether great or small, no-one will ever be able to see it, either in front of him or behind him. He will have another peculiarity: no-one suffers water or fire better than him. He will have another peculiarity: there will not be another retainer or steward like him."
> 
> "Then Cai arises. Cai had a power: as long as nine nights and nine days could he be without sleep. A sword-wound from Cai no physician could heal. Triumphant was Cai. He could become as tall as the highest tree in a forest if he wanted. He had another peculiarity: even in the heaviest rain, a handbreadth above him and a hand-bredth below him would be dry, and whatever there was in his hand, so fierce was his power; even if his companions were suffering the greatest cold, it could kindle a fire for them."
> 
> -Culhwch and Olwen http://www.culhwch.info/


End file.
